Four things we should be proud of

Collective Bargaining: Yes, I know the strike by Toronto city workers means kids can't cool off in public pools, parents' best-laid summer child-care plans have gone awry and garbage bins are overflowing.

I feel your pain.

Just like most of you, I don't have 18 sick days a year to bank and cash out.

I also know that, without unions, many of us would be working in Dickensian conditions.

How would you like to be a miner without a union ensuring that the company meets safety standards? Or a sweatshop worker without proper ventilation, light or even fire escapes?

Collective bargaining floats all our boats. Without it, there would be no minimum wage, no paid sick leave, no health and pension benefits, no vacations. Do you honestly believe workers would still get a fair break if the bottom liners had nothing to keep them in check?

It's not workers who drove us into this economic mess. Workers weren't paying themselves multi-million-dollar bonuses for running companies into the ground. In fact, as executive salaries were rising, workers' wages were falling.

This isn't the time to get rid of unions. This is the time to be strengthening them.

Public Broadcasting: Fully funded public broadcasting is good for Canadian culture, which includes tens of thousands of workers who perform and produce programming.

It is also crucial in an era when private broadcasters fail to live up to their licence requirements to provide local news and other domestic content.

Even more important, as much as I adore the Internet, it is no substitute for rigorous Canadian eyes and ears on all levels of government – as well as on Canadian corporations, which might otherwise rip off consumers while raping the environment.

Forget CTV and Global. They are beyond redemption, as they demonstrated during their campaign to make viewers pay for what they are now getting free – i.e. cable fees for local over-the-air stations.

I'm also talking The National, which is now riddled with commercials and no longer has the weight or authority it used to have.

That's because, to sell ads, it has to produce eyeballs. That means more Michael Jackson, less Stephen Harper.

And that's not good for Canada.

Freedom of Expression: Excuse me but since when did the interests of Zionist lobby groups determine who or what Canadians can see and hear?

In recent months, to list just three examples, there have been concerted campaigns against the staging of Caryl Churchill's controversial Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza and an academic conference at York University where the so-called "one-state solution'' was to be discussed. We also saw British MP George Galloway be denied entry to the country for a speaking tour, just because he brought aid to bombed-out Gaza.

Now comes word that the only way the respected Al-Jazeera English news service, currently applying for TV distribution in Canada, can win the support of these same Jewish groups is to have them become consultants.

Journalistically speaking, that is hardly kosher.

U.S. War Resisters: Canada's proudest moment this century was when it refused to join George W. Bush in his attack on Iraq.

Yet we deport Americans who didn't sign up to brutalize civilians.

Those kids were hoodwinked, both by their government and its lapdog media, into thinking they were joining up to protect their country from terrorism and Saddam Hussein's non-existent weapons of mass destruction.

Rather than welcome them, we send them back over the border and to certain prison sentences.

More on thestar.com

We value respectful and thoughtful discussion. Readers are encouraged to flag comments that fail to meet the standards outlined in our
Community Code of Conduct.
For further information, including our legal guidelines, please see our full website
Terms and Conditions.